Various Sundries: Desks, Twitter, and Trendy Writing

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Phoebe 3448 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F2010%2F07%2F09%2Fvarious-sundries-desks-twitter-and-trendy-writing%2FVarious+Sundries%3A+Desks%2C+Twitter%2C+and+Trendy+Writing2010-07-09+14%3A45%3A56Phoebehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebeeating.com%2F%3Fp%3D333

Oh my god, guys! I’ve been so busy! So busy that I half-started a post on Wednesday’s YA Highway Roadtrip Wednesday Topic (because, as someone about to give away all of her furniture, move, and get new stuff–including a new desk; I can’t wait!–I have a lot to say about it!). But alas, it’s been sitting here, half-finished, for two days now. And probably will remain that way.

No loss, I assure you. When it comes down to it, all I was going to say was that I want to get an expedit desk from ikea.

It doesn’t help matters that I’ve decided to go ahead and finally give twitter a whirl. Poor timing, you know? I’ve resisted for years now–seeing the service as redundant in a world of real blogging, facebook, and google buzz (which I love–but no one uses!). But aaall the writing peeps seem to use it, so, since I have a guest post forthcoming on YA Highway, I figured it was time to jump in. My first foray looked promising. And last night, for the first time in a decade, I ended up in what was essentially a chat room with a bunch of real, live, working (and some publishing) writers. Sure, I still think it’s silly to essentially reverse engineer an AOL chatroom–but, damn, I’d forgotten how much I’d loved real-time chat back in the day. It was really exhilarating. I lost 30 minutes of writing time, but ended up feeling pretty inspired and pushing myself to 56,000 words last night, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I also got to hear about how Maggie Stiefvater was dancing around her living room to her own audio book. Adorable!

Anyway, Cindy Pon tweeted about an article she wrote over at Supernatural Underground about upcoming trends. The first trend there was “mermaids”–and I wanted to comment and be like, “Yes! Mermaids! Everyone should want to read about those!”

I hesitated, though, because I couldn’t help but think, “Damn, I’m trendy.”

It’s not like I don’t know that I’m writing to an up-and-coming trend. I’ll come right out and say it: I never would have started writing SEAS RUN DRY were it not for an agent’s tweets about how much she wants mermaid manuscripts. But I also never imagined that I’d be the type of person who writes to trends (and here I have to wonder–do any writers see themselves that way at all?). But what Ginger Clark’s tweets did was spark inspiration in me–or not even precisely inspiration, but rather memory. Because I thought, “Man, what the hell kind of story could I write that features mermaids?”

And then I remembered that, at fifteen, I’d started writing one.

I was never a big mermaid person generally. That was my sister, who collected them. They were all over her room when we were kids. Mermaid toys. Statuettes. Pictures. Books. Her mermaid love was so well-known in our family that our aunt bought her a toy mermaid as a get well gift when, at sixteen, my sister got mono–despite the fact that she was far too old and too cool for such things.

In contrast, I was a bit of a tomboy. I liked The Little Mermaid well enough, and even had an Ariel Barbie. But I didn’t play with her all that much. I did play with her tail, though, which was fabric and removable. I had this boy doll, the prince from the LadyLovelyLocks line, and I’d put the tail on him and make him a merman. He’d swim around underwater and have adventures.

Years later, when I was in high school, I stumbled upon a book of short stories about mermaids that had survived on my sister’s bookshelf through the Great Mermaid Purge of 1995. The stories there were pretty dark, and vivid, and sparked an idea in me. You see, we’d been reading The Odyssey in high school, and I felt for Telemachus. As a kid who had lost her own father pretty young, I saw his journey as the more significant one: how he believes, against all hope, that his father is alive, and how he journeys out to find him. I wanted to write my own Telemachus story. So I started writing this Telemachus/mermaidmerman mash-up about a half-human merman who tries to find his human father.

Like most of my writing projects back then, I didn’t get very far with it. But the idea stayed embedded in my mind for years. The merman, named Loril, was a surprisingly vital character. And so when I heard that people actually, you know, wanted to read about mermaids, I initially giggled–but only for a moment. Because then Loril came back to me, fully formed.

The story’s evolved since its incipience, of course. Because back when I was fifteen, I was pretty cheesy. In fact, I recently found the old version of this story buried in the netherlands of my harddrive. And . . . well, here; I’ll share my (unedited, with authentic ninth grade grammar intact) notes with you. They speak for themselves:

Loril Walker: Dead at Seventeen
I. Introduction
A.Loril Walker, age seventeen, is alone in New York City
1. He is hungry.
2. He is alone.
3. He believes his journey to the city is a mistake.
4. He is bitter and angsty.
5. He throws out his copy of “The Odyssey”
6. He is searching for his father.
7. He is different.
a. Emotionally-feels old, tired, weary of life.
b. Physically-has webbed fingers, bright emerald eyes, dark hair. Possible reference to breathing underwater or gilled legs.
8. He wishes to return to the sea.
B. Mazai births a human boy.
1. Mazai is a “creature of the sea” (don’t use mermaid)
2. Her people warned her against this.
3. The other women come to see the new child after his first breath. They are horrified.
4. She further offends her people by naming him Loril. a. Loril-”Song bringer”
b. From an ancient poem- “The moon rose in darkness above the waves and over the golden foam/Young Loril’s song spun red knots into the hearts of old/He took his shell and trumpeted, notes rising to the starry sky/The Gods lie dead in the seaweed, but their spirits would never die.
c. Loril was a hero akin to Moses. He led his people to off the coast of Florida, wrote their laws, and established their civilization as a major sea power. According to myth, he was a musician of the highest ranking whose songs could soothe the sea during a storm. He was brought to the monarch for a minor matter, but when disease struck down all at court accept for him, he took it apon himself to relocate his people.
5. She refuses to give him up. The women warn her that she’ll have to live with the consequences of being the mother of a “legger.”

Oof.

I have no idea what the title was all about, since I’m pretty sure the character was never going to die. And I have no idea what was up with all the angst in the first half (and it’s now set at the Jersey shore, which is a much better choice. Mermen in NYC? Unlikely!) The second half of the outline isn’t that far from some stuff that’s made it into the actual book, though; Loril is still named after a mythic character, and I still rarely use the term “mermaid.”

I’ve also since learned to spell “upon.”

Anyway, I still can’t deny that I’m writing to a trend. If I hadn’t heard that the subject might potentially be a popular one, I wouldn’t have thought of Loril or his story. It would have remained buried in my memory, latent. But so many people buck against the idea of writing trendy stuff. “I don’t write about vampires!” they say, “I write about paranormal romance about rabid foxes! FROM SPACE!” or “I’ve heard the next idea they’re pushing is mermaids–HA! AMIRITE?”*

All I can say is, and I’m sure it’s true of many people writing things they hope will sell someday, even if trendiness was the incipient motivation for writing SEAS RUN DRY, my story is no less important to me for it. Even if it never sells, I’ll be glad that I finally went ahead and wrote it down. After all, I’m not writing about a merman for those big merman bucks (sand dollars?)–I’m writing about a merman because he’s real to me, because he breathes (possibly underwater), and because I thought his story was worth telling.

*I’ll admit it–I laugh too! Snort! Mermen! Redonkulous!